The Idiot's Guide to Mille-Feuille in Twenty Steps
by readerofasaph
Summary: "Unfortunately Atsushi is indeed a human being, although in all fairness Tatsuya is far from being the first person to assume he isn't. " Written for the basketballpoetsociety 20 things challenge on tumblr.


1. _Pâte feuilletée: the first time I see you in the kitchen, you're trying to make it from scratch. Spilled sugar across the laminate countertop, flour on the floor, burnt butter sizzling in a nonstick pan. Like most other things about you, it should be funny but instead it's just endearing._

They've been teammates for a week when Atsushi says the words 'I hate basketball.' All Tatsuya can think is _But you don't_.

2. _For your second attempt I talk you into buying pre-made frozen puff pastry from the supermarket. This is a surprisingly difficult task of persuasion. It's a law of the universe that all my favourite people are stubborn as hell. _

Japan is home and not-home: the place where Tatsuya recognises all the missing parts of himself, but nevertheless a country where Tatsuya will never belong. Still, he fits in. Tatsuya is good at fitting in even where he doesn't belong.

Atsushi never fits in, and always belongs; together, they form the halves of a whole that Tatsuya never counted on being part of .

3. _You eat the baked puff pastry sheets straight from the oven, having given up on making the crème pâtissière. I can't say I didn't see this coming. _

Yousen's basketball practices are long and frequent, demanding even by the personal standards Tatsuya sets for himself. All his teammates are disciplined, but it doesn't take long to notice that Atsushi always arrives early, and stays late, and mows through Araki-sensei's ball drills like they are nothing.

"He's from the Generation of Miracles," Fukui says, as if this is self-explanatory. The nickname means nothing to Tatsuya. It doesn't have to; Atsushi's playing speaks for itself.

4. _After a third unsuccessful baking spree you turn up to class and go without snacks for a whole day, sending the entire student body abuzz with the rumor that you may be dying. After final period I find you in one of the staff toilets vomiting undigested raw egg whites into the sink._

_You still show up to basketball practice that afternoon._

Atsushi is living proof that Alex's words — still fresh in Tatsuya's mind — are correct.. He hadn't expected to land in Japan to be reminded of the limits of his own talent on a daily basis.

It's a good thing and bad. Good, because it helps Tatsuya keeps his edge while waiting for Taiga. Bad, because it will never not hurt to see Atsushi standing sleepily under the hoop, looking bored out of his mind and blocking every shot that comes his way easily and effortlessly as swatting lazy mosquitoes.

5. _At this point I suggest you begin with something simpler. Brownies, for instance._

In fact he considers the possibility of challenging Atsushi (once, then twice, then every time the younger boy behaves like an asshole, which is often). But Tatsuya has promises to keep first.

6. _You undercook the brownies and eat them anyway. I stock up on antacids and activated charcoal and stash the medication in my dorm room._

Besides, no one at Yousen is fooled by Atsushi's childishness, Tatsuya least of all. Taiga had many friends, and one brother; in basketball he had rivals and targets.

Atsushi has no friends, not by the measure that Tatsuya uses. But he had a captain once, and a team whose name even Araki-sensei mentions with respect ("The children of Teikou are undefeated in spirit."), and the moment he steps onto a court the entire world is his enemy.

Atsushi is merciless in basketball; in many ways this will make it easier for Tatsuya to fight him, if and when the time comes.

7. _A month later you offer me one piece of surprisingly edible shortbread, still warm. (You eat the remainder yourself). Wei Liu wonders out loud if you bought it from the bakery._

_'Atsushi doesn't lie,' I say, though it's clear from your expression you could care less what Wei Liu thinks._

'Kuro-chin' and 'Aka-chin' are Atsushi's explanations for everything about Teikou, to the point where Tatsuya starts looking up magazine articles about the Generation of Miracles. The bombastic journalism is less helpful than desired; Kuroko Tetsuya is never mentioned.

"Was he your friend?"

"Kuro-chin is Kuro-chin."

8. _You work your way up to sponge cake. Slow as it is, I find your progress nothing short of miraculous._

_(But not as unbelievable as the way you play)._

There are times Tatsuya wants to ask the obvious questions, for instance: 'What happened? Why do you hate basketball? What happened to you, to make you play the way you do?'

Mostly he doesn't ask because Atsushi wouldn't know how to reply anyway, and besides, if there exist meaningful answers to those queries then no doubt Kuroko Tetsuya will find them one day.

9. _But you're still the messiest baker I've ever seen and you still forget to wash-up, every time. _

On the other hand these considerations don't stop Atsushi from asking Tatsuya the obvious questions.

10. _Your first successful mille-feuille comes into existence six months after we first meet. It involves pre-rolled pastry, custard powder, and the assistance of some very pretty girls from the Home Economics Club, all of them desperate to get you out of the student kitchens. _

And Tatsuya answers them. At first he does it because it talking to Atsushi does not seem dissimilar to confessing secrets to a housecat. You speak them out loud, and feel better, and there is no expectation that the cat will understand or recollect what you say, or care about it.

11. _None of those girls have ever seen you play basketball. Nor did they have last weekend's privilege of following you around Tokyo from confectionery shop to confectionery shop in search of the limited-edition kaffir-lime boiled candies you saw advertised in a kids' magazine. _

_It took us two days to find the damn sweets. _

Unfortunately Atsushi is indeed a human being, although in all fairness Tatsuya is far from being the first person to assume he isn't. Atsushi hears. He remembers.

Sometimes he asks, 'Why?'

12. _In other words they do not realise that once you get an idea in your head, you are fixated. _

The sad thing is that Tatsuya does know the answers to all the obvious questions, at least where they pertain to himself. But knowing is not the same as admitting, and no matter how Tatsuya spins it he can't help thinking of himself — his story, his motivations, his basketball — as desperately uncool.

13. _And so you continue transforming the home economics classrooms into disaster zones three times a week. By now you are in second-year and I am your captain and a surprising number of people have decided that this is entirely the basketball club's problem_.

"Something that will let people understand who you are," he told Taiga, once upon a time.

In reality Tatsuya's basketball says very little about who he is, and everything about who he'd like to be.

14._ And Araki-sensei decides it's entirely my problem. _

Mostly, he'd like to have self-control.

He can't remember how many times he's said to Taiga: "Master your emotions." Turns out he was really saying the words to himself, all this time. And he wasn't listening.

15._ I go out and buy a recipe book. _

_(It seems like the logical next step.) _

And all he's ever wanted to do is master the game. Fitness, fundamentals, tactics, special moves.

But there is a place beyond mastery, and Tatsuya was just a kid when he encountered it for the first time: Alex in her sunglasses and her ridiculous high-heels, and the casual, intuitive way she drove across the asphalt, as if she owned the ball, the court, the game itself.

Alex was his first hero. But Tatsuya is not going to admit that to anyone, not even Atsushi.

16._ In the end I don't teach you how how to bake. I've never taught you anything in the time we've known each other. (The learning has been and will always be on my end). _

_But I read instructions out loud, step-by-step, and I stop you from eating raw dough before you get around to using it, and the moment I begin loading the dishwasher you shuffle over and start doing it yourself. _

_As a rule you are inconsiderate but not oblivious; often you are less oblivious than I would like._

"Maybe we'll face each other on the court some day," Tatsuya says one afternoon.

Atsushi pauses mid-chew, a chocolate wafer cigar suspended between his thumb and index finger. "You wouldn't win. Well, I guess you might win if I was hungry."

17. _For three weeks you switch to making friands because the sight of crème pâtissière is making us both feel ill._

He's always had a habit of taking on roles and changing himself to fit. Basketball player, Taiga's big brother, Alex's protégé — they all gave him something to be, and served their purpose, until their time passed and everything he was supposed to be felt like another leaden chain dragging across his limbs.

18. _And then it's back to business as usual. Your attitude to baking sweets tells me more about Teikou than anything you've ever said. _

And truth is he's scared as fuck to find out who he is, without a little brother, without a mentor, without the hope of being the best.

(But not without basketball. Never without basketball.)

19. _And nobody is surprised when, days after my final Winter Cup, you amble into the sports centre and present to us a tray of beautifully cut slices: fragrant with vanilla, glazed with fondant, pastry soft and warm and buttery. _

And so maybe Atsushi is perfect because bar none he's the most judgmental player Tatsuya has ever met.

Atsushi is whimsical, occasionally idiotic; he reads the game better than anyone, better than Fukui, better than Tatsuya, better than Araki-sensei herself.

And he never lies. Atsushi doesn't even know how to be kind, never mind polite.

(He's the closest person to truth that Tatsuya will ever know.)

20. _These days we hate mille-feuille nearly as much as you hate basketball._

"Say, Atsushi."

"Yeah?"

"What do you think of me?"

"Muro-chin is Muro-chin," Atsushi says, sounding a little puzzled; Tatsuya smiles and hands him another potato crisp.


End file.
